


Origins

by sparxwrites



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Angst, Enderman, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Hurt/Comfort, Monsters, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 00:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2208780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, moving the world around himself was simple, a matter of playing dot-to-dot with where he was and where he wanted to be – stepping sideways through the pale moonlight of the End and then sideways again back to the brilliant harshness of the Overworld. Now, something that was once as second-nature to him is strange and wrenching and painful in a way that makes him feel ill.</p><p>Whatever <i>they</i> have done to him, they’ve broken him inside as well as out.</p><p>(The story of how Rythian came to be... well, Rythian.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Origins

He nearly kills himself, getting out of the laboratory.

Once, moving the world around himself was simple, a matter of playing dot-to-dot with where he was and where he wanted to be – stepping sideways through the pale moonlight of the End and then sideways again back to the brilliant harshness of the Overworld. Now, something that was once as second-nature to him is strange and wrenching and painful in a way that makes him feel ill.

Whatever _they_ have done to him, they’ve broken him inside as well as out.

(He thinks of the strange, Y-shaped mark on his chest, the scars ropy and ash-pale against the brown of his skin and wonders maybe, with a swooping sensation somewhere in the pit of his stomach, if they fractured his pearl. It would certainly make sense, would explain his shaky disconnect from the End, the way the world refuses to warp around him like it used to, the way everything seems tilted through ninety degrees and _wrong_.)

He manages it, though. Eventually, after days and weeks – months, maybe? Time is strange in white cells where the lights never go out – of trying, he manages it. When there is nothing to do other than sit and wait for the humans to come for him, wait for more trials and tests, he has nothing better to do than try.

Until suddenly he is no longer trying but _doing._

The world twists around him as normal, and he thinks maybe he’s fixed himself, maybe he’s free and _normal_ again. But then everything is freezing cold and dark, so _so_ dark, so far from the comforting glow of the End that he panics, loses himself somewhere between worlds and wrenches himself free far too close to where he’d just left.

He comes back to the Overworld on a flat plain of grass, trees nearby and the sound of a river just out of sight in the nighttime gloom, and the warmth of it feels like it’s burning him alive.

The laboratory looms huge and hungry over the tops of the trees, closer than the horizon. Too close. He shivers, sucks in breath after breath that feels like lava in his throat and wonders why the sun is trying to set him on fire. The tips of his fingers have gone a blue-purple colour when he looks at them, and he does not yet understand all of this strange, new body but he does not feel like that is a good sign.

It occurs to him after a moment that everything is a little purple, though, dyed by the dim light of his eyes in the darkness. Blades of grass gleam dully in the dark, and the ice that has spiderwebbed in curls of frost over his forearms turns lilac when he stares directly at it.

For a long time he simply lies there as his body re-acclimatises to the heat, staring at his arm as the ice melts into tiny droplets in the fading night-time heat, running in rivulets over skin that looks too pale to be his own. It’s not white, not like the walls of his cell or the skin of the scientist that most often comes to take him from it, but it’s still a far cry from the night-sky, oily black that used to cover him, comforting in its liquid-shimmer darkness.

When he finally looks up, coaxed into movement by the rattling hiss of a creeper somewhere far-off but getting closer, he sees one of his own kind lurking in the darkness. They’re hiding between two trees and eyeing him with their own glowing eyes, and he nearly cries with relief at the familiar shape.

“ _Sibling_!” he calls out, forcing himself to his feet on legs shaky with underuse, reaching out a hand towards them and cursing the way this new throat makes every sound soft like water and clear like a bell. “ _Sibling!_ _Here I am! Sibling! Help me!_ ”

His sibling turns towards him, screeches a greeting in low, static tones. He breathes out a low sigh of relief, convinced he is saved as his sibling starts towards him-

-and attacks.

They teleport forward in the blink of an eye, razor teeth bared wide and purple light welling up from their mouth and throat to spill out. There’s murder in their eyes, and he flinches backwards, scrabbles in the dirty to try and crawl away before it’s too late and they’re upon him.

“ _Sibling_! Ree-thee-ahn!” he calls to his sibling, desperately, curls up into a ball to try and save himself from the sharp, grasping hands. It does not work. Claws sink into his thigh, tear his fragile skin and flesh and he yells. “Ree-thee-ahn! Ree-thee-ahn!”

Either his sibling cannot understand him, or does not care, because the assault does not stop. He feels a chunk of flesh ripped from his shoulder, a meagre handful that is simply _no longer there_ , and as he screams he curses the throat that turns the sound into a clear, high note rather than the furious grating crackle it should be.

Curses the throat that mangles his words so badly that his siblings can apparently no longer understand him when he cries out to them for help.

In the end, it’s the rain that saves him – fat, heavy droplets that fall from the sky and sizzle angrily where they hit his sibling’s skin. His sibling screeches displeasure and pain in a burst of static, vanishes with enviable ease

The rain does not burn him. He feels a little sick.

Old fear compels him, requires _movement_ away from the rain with a sense of urgency lest his skin start burning and his flesh start melting from his bones. There’s a tree barely five meters from him, and the shelter of its branches calls to him with a siren song – but he can’t move, can barely find it in himself to breathe through the pain and exhaustion.

So he lies there on the floor, on the dirt that is slowly turning to wet mud around him, shivers against every raindrop that hits his exposed skin, and bleeds slow crimson onto the grass, and _breathes_.

That’s where the scientist finds him, naked and bloody and filthy as he lies curled in the mud, shaking hands wound over his head to protect himself from the rain. The scientist sighs, shakes his head, exhales a slow breath of relief when he nudges the lump and it moves. “How did you get here?” the scientist asks, like one might talk to a dog particularly prone to wandering, voice somewhere between curious and disappointed.

He shudders at the touch of a foot to his rib, shudders again as the motion jars his injuries. “Ree-thee-ahn,” he moans quietly into the dirt, presses his face further into the mud and hopes that maybe he drowns in it, so he will not have to go back. _Sibling. Come back. Why did you do this_.

“Rythian?” repeats the scientist, curiously, mangling the word even further with his stupid human voice and his stupid human accent. “Huh. I’ve never heard you say that before – never heard you say _anything_ really.” The scientist pauses for a second, and then makes an excited noise. “Is that your _name_?”

“Ree-thee-ahn, _ree-thee-ahn_ ,” he repeats, softly, wonders if the scientist is deaf or stupid that he cannot hear the word and repeat it properly. The rest of what comes out of the scientist’s mouth is gibberish – a strange chime of sounds that is familiar through long exposure, but no more intelligible for it.

A slow smile spreads across the scientist’s face. “Is that your name?” he asks, crouches down to pet the creature’s hair and doesn’t flinch when pointed, jagged-edged teeth snap close to the soft flesh of his fingers in protest. “Rythian? Hehe. That’s a funny name – but then, I suppose, you’re sort of a funny thing, aren’t you? Not quite enderman, not quite human…”

The scientist reaches down, grabs him by the scruff of his neck and the back of his hair, hauls him to his feet. He whimpers, stumbles and lets his knees buckle beneath him to send him sprawling back to the comforting safety of the mud, and the scientist sighs.

“Look at you,” the scientist says, hauling him up again and this time holding him there until he can get his legs under himself. Until his body stops trembling enough that he can hold himself upright. Even hunched over, curled into himself and shivering, he’s taller than the scientist by a head or so, but the scientist doesn’t seem bothered. “You’ve made a mess of yourself.”

There’s blood running from one shaking thigh, crusting sticky and tight on his back, mud darkening the grey-tinged brown of his skin even further. _Mess_ is putting it lightly.

The scientist sighs, releases him and makes a strange clicking noise with his tongue. “Let’s get you back, then,” the scientist says, turns his back and heads away from the trees. Back to laboratory looming huge and grey above the treetops. He’s not sure what to do other than turn and follow, because he’s injured and scared and cold, so cold now the burning has stopped. His own family has rejected him, tried to kill him.

He doesn’t want to go back, but where else can he go?

He’s about to do so when he sees his sibling, back again in the same cluster of trees it had come from – perhaps it had returned there to hide from the rain. He pauses. Swallows hard. Reaches out for it, again, in the hopes that things might be different this time, opens his mouth-

“Come on, Rythian,” calls the scientist, holding out a beckoning hand. He freezes.

He knows the scientist doesn’t know what the word means, can’t even _pronounce_ it properly – but the scientist had used it nonetheless. Called him _sibling_.

The thought of being a sibling to the humans makes him feel sick.

But he thinks about it, thinks of the new, blunt stubbiness of his fingers and the shortness of his limbs – despite being taller than most of the other humans – and the fuzz of hair growing on his hair, and he wonders. He’s not seen the rest of his body, not found glass or a body of water big enough to check his whole appearance, but he wonders.

Perhaps the scientist is right. He may still have sharp teeth, still have eyes that glow Ender purple, but he is no longer Enderman.

He is _human_.

“Rythian!” snaps the scientist, grabs his wrist and tugs him forward until he stumbles and almost slips on the mud, injured thigh protesting at the moment. “Come _on_. I’m going to have to sedate you if you don’t stop being silly, and you don’t like that, do you?”  
“Ree-thee-ahn,” he repeats, quietly, glances desperately back at the shadowy copse where his sibling had been.

They are gone. He is alone, with the scientist that calls him sibling.

“Rythian,” he says, mimics the strange inflection the scientist puts onto it and hates how much more natural it feels to his soft, weak, _uselessly human_ throat.  
The scientist nods, tugs him along impatiently as they head back to the very place he’s just escaped from. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re called Rythian. It’s very clever of you to be able to say that, well done.”

The clear, lilting up-down of the scientist’s voice is more familiar to him than his sibling’s- than the Enderman’s screech was. _Rythian_ , he thinks to himself. _Sibling to the humans_.

Rythian cries the whole way back to the laboratory, and hates the fact that the strange water falling down his cheeks does not burn his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> based off a vague headcanon that some of my friends came up with (or maybe borrowed from somewhere else? i'm not sure if this is a wider thing in the fandom, considering how new i am) that rythian was created from an enderman by lalna/yogslabs. that led to me thinking about what, exactly, it would be like for a newly-human enderman trying to cope with their humanity, and where on earth he'd pulled "rythian" as a name from, and one thing led to another...


End file.
